Law professor Ned Foley has proposed what he seems to think is a new Concorcet-compliant method. He calls it "total vote runoff". My guess is that it has in fact been discussed on this list under another name. I am I right, and (if so) what do the members of this list call it? https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328946 Here is the summary description: "Total Vote Runoff (TVR) is an electoral system designed to be identical to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is the most commonly understood and implemented form of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, except for one key detail. Like IRV, TVR sequentially eliminates the weakest candidate on the ranked-choice ballot when no candidate is ranked first on a majority of ballots. Unlike IRV, however, TVR identifies the weakest candidate to be eliminated based on the total votes each candidate receives on all the ballots, rather than just the number of first-place votes (as IRV does). A candidate’s total votes from each ballot is defined as the number of other candidates the candidate is ranked higher than on the ballot — as being ranked higher than another candidate is equivalent to securing a vote against that candidate, given that ranked-choice ballots can be conceived as mathematically equivalent to a round-robin election among all the candidates on the ballot. " --Bob Richard

Hi Bob, I was thinking Baldwin, and trying to look it up to confirm I see someone else had the same idea, and has made edits here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanson%27s_method Where with Nanson you'd eliminate all below-average scores whereas with Baldwin you just eliminate one at a time. Kevin (end) Le vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 19:11:24 UTC−6, Bob Richard (lists) <lists001@robertjrichard.com> a écrit :    Law professor Ned Foley has proposed what he seems to think is a new Concorcet-compliant method. He calls it "total vote runoff".  My guess is that it has in fact been discussed on this list under another name. I am I right, and (if so) what do the members of this list call it? https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328946 Here is the summary description: "Total Vote Runoff (TVR) is an electoral system designed to be identical to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is the most commonly understood and implemented form of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, except for one key detail. Like IRV, TVR sequentially eliminates the weakest candidate on the ranked-choice ballot when no candidate is ranked first on a majority of ballots. Unlike IRV, however, TVR identifies the weakest candidate to be eliminated based on the total votes each candidate receives on all the ballots, rather than just the number of first-place votes (as IRV does). A candidate’s total votes from each ballot is defined as the number of other candidates the candidate is ranked higher than on the ballot — as being ranked higher than another candidate is equivalent to securing a vote against that candidate, given that ranked-choice ballots can be conceived as mathematically equivalent to a round-robin election among all the candidates on the ballot. " --Bob Richard ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

> On 01/20/2023 8:11 PM EST Bob Richard (lists) <lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: > > > Law professor Ned Foley has proposed what he seems to think is a new Concorcet-compliant method. He calls it "total vote runoff". My guess is that it has in fact been discussed on this list under another name. I am I right, and (if so) what do the members of this list call it? > > https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328946 > > Here is the summary description: > > "Total Vote Runoff (TVR) is an electoral system designed to be identical to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is the most commonly understood and implemented form of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, except for one key detail. Like IRV, TVR sequentially eliminates the weakest candidate on the ranked-choice ballot when no candidate is ranked first on a majority of ballots. Unlike IRV, however, TVR identifies the weakest candidate to be eliminated based on the total votes each candidate receives on all the ballots, rather than just the number of first-place votes (as IRV does). A candidate’s total votes from each ballot is defined as the number of other candidates the candidate is ranked higher than on the ballot — as being ranked higher than another candidate is equivalent to securing a vote against that candidate, given that ranked-choice ballots can be conceived as mathematically equivalent to a round-robin election among all the candidates on the ballot. " I don't see how this makes it Condorcet consistent. -- r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." . . .

If Robert (or anyone else) can demonstrate that this is not Condorcet, they should let Foley know pronto. He is a Condorcet enthusiast. The method appears to be to eliminate the current Borda loser in each round, until one remaining candidate has a majority. Or something very close to that. Foley is a lawyer, not a social choice theorist, and his explanations are a little hard to follow. --Bob Richard ------ Original Message ------ >From "robert bristow-johnson" <rbj@audioimagination.com> To election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date 1/20/2023 7:01:44 PM Subject Re: [EM] "Total Vote Runoff" > > >> On 01/20/2023 8:11 PM EST Bob Richard (lists) <lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: >> >> >> Law professor Ned Foley has proposed what he seems to think is a new Concorcet-compliant method. He calls it "total vote runoff". My guess is that it has in fact been discussed on this list under another name. I am I right, and (if so) what do the members of this list call it? >> >>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328946 >> >> Here is the summary description: >> >> "Total Vote Runoff (TVR) is an electoral system designed to be identical to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is the most commonly understood and implemented form of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, except for one key detail. Like IRV, TVR sequentially eliminates the weakest candidate on the ranked-choice ballot when no candidate is ranked first on a majority of ballots. Unlike IRV, however, TVR identifies the weakest candidate to be eliminated based on the total votes each candidate receives on all the ballots, rather than just the number of first-place votes (as IRV does). A candidate’s total votes from each ballot is defined as the number of other candidates the candidate is ranked higher than on the ballot — as being ranked higher than another candidate is equivalent to securing a vote against that candidate, given that ranked-choice ballots can be conceived as mathematically equivalent to a round-robin election among all the candidates on the ballot. " > >I don't see how this makes it Condorcet consistent. > >-- > >r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com > >"Imagination is more important than knowledge." > >. >. >. >---- >Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info >

> On 01/20/2023 10:31 PM EST Bob Richard (lists) <lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: > > > If Robert (or anyone else) can demonstrate that this is not Condorcet, > they should let Foley know pronto. He is a Condorcet enthusiast. > I am that. But I, also, am not trained in social choice theory or psephology. I am trained in the mathematics surrounding digital signal processing and my experience is DSP of audio and music signals (stuff like guitar effects and music synthesis). I have trouble reading some of the math in other papers coming from the likes of Maskin or Tideman or Schulze. Sometimes it's just the way it's setup, but I am not as good at discrete mathematics as I am into the kinda math that engineers and meatball physicists use (that comes outa calculus and diff eq and linear system theory) > The method appears to be to eliminate the current Borda loser in each > round, until one remaining candidate has a majority. Or something very > close to that. Foley is a lawyer, not a social choice theorist, and his > explanations are a little hard to follow. He got Maskin on his side. I almost got Maskin and Tideman to appear (via Zoom) before the Vermont Senate Government Operations committee last April but the chair of the committee *snubbed* them. Unbelievable. I am reading (or skimming) Foley's paper now and will probably send him an email. His email address appears to be foley.33@osu.edu . I would hope that folks here better than me might pipe in. It appears that Foley is unaware of Burlington 2009 and of Minneapolis 2021 (which had a cycle). And since Maskin was certainly aware of Burlington 2009 (because of my conversations with him), I am surprized that there is all this talk in the paper of Alaska 2022 but none of Burlington 2009. -- r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." . . .

A Condorcet Candidate will never have the lowest Borda Count ... not even below average ... so you could speed this up by eliminating at each step all candidates with below average "total votes." But the method is clone dependent ... unlike a similar but simpler Condorcet Compliant method that Benham calls "Gross Loser Elimination" (GLE) which (at each step) eliminates the candidate with the smallest single pairwise vote instead of eliminating the candidate with the smallest sum of pairwise votes. In my opinion GLE is the simplest elimination method worth supporting. Operationally you start by constructing the same precinct summable pairwise matrix that you would use for Borda Elimination. But instead of eliminating (at each step) the remaining candidate with the smallest row sum, you eliminate (at each step) the remaining candidate with the smallest row min ... the Gross Loser. The margins versions of these two related methods are slightly more transparent, as well as precisely equivalent in the case of complete rankings.. The pairwise margins matrix is obtained from the pairwise vote matrix by subtracting is transpose from it. In a margins matrix every negative entry in the row of a candidate represents a pairwise loss for that candidate. The row of a Condorcet candidate will have no negative entry, but every other row will. In particular the margins row of the Gross Loser must have a negative entry ... so the Gross Loser cannot be a Condorcet Candidate ... therefore eliminating the Gross Loser (or any other candidate with a negative entry) cannot eliminate a Condorcet candidate. The average of all of the rows in the margins matrix is a row of zeros ... and therefore has a zero row summ. But the row of a Condorcet candidate has a positive row sum ... therefore above average. So you no longer have to take on blind faith the veracity of these assertions about the Condorcet efficiency of Borda Elimination and GLE.... you can see for yourself the complete rationale! Next time you see Maskin ... alert him to the existence of GLE ... so he can break out of his rut of supporting clone depend methods ... like Copeland, Borda, Black, Nanson, Baldwin, etc. At least he hasn't yet recommended Kemeny-Young! ... (as far as I am aware) I have to believe that if he knew better, he would do better! -Forest On Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 7:54 PM robert bristow-johnson < rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote: > > > > On 01/20/2023 10:31 PM EST Bob Richard (lists) < > lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: > > > > > > If Robert (or anyone else) can demonstrate that this is not Condorcet, > > they should let Foley know pronto. He is a Condorcet enthusiast. > > > > I am that. But I, also, am not trained in social choice theory or > psephology. I am trained in the mathematics surrounding digital signal > processing and my experience is DSP of audio and music signals (stuff like > guitar effects and music synthesis). > > I have trouble reading some of the math in other papers coming from the > likes of Maskin or Tideman or Schulze. Sometimes it's just the way it's > setup, but I am not as good at discrete mathematics as I am into the kinda > math that engineers and meatball physicists use (that comes outa calculus > and diff eq and linear system theory) > > > The method appears to be to eliminate the current Borda loser in each > > round, until one remaining candidate has a majority. Or something very > > close to that. Foley is a lawyer, not a social choice theorist, and his > > explanations are a little hard to follow. > > He got Maskin on his side. I almost got Maskin and Tideman to appear (via > Zoom) before the Vermont Senate Government Operations committee last April > but the chair of the committee *snubbed* them. Unbelievable. > > I am reading (or skimming) Foley's paper now and will probably send him an > email. His email address appears to be foley.33@osu.edu . I would hope > that folks here better than me might pipe in. It appears that Foley is > unaware of Burlington 2009 and of Minneapolis 2021 (which had a cycle). > And since Maskin was certainly aware of Burlington 2009 (because of my > conversations with him), I am surprized that there is all this talk in the > paper of Alaska 2022 but none of Burlington 2009. > > > -- > > r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com > > "Imagination is more important than knowledge." > > . > . > . > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list > info >

On 21.01.2023 03:10, Kevin Venzke wrote: > Hi Bob, > > I was thinking Baldwin, and trying to look it up to confirm I see > someone else had the same idea, and has made edits here: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanson%27s_method > > Where with Nanson you'd eliminate all below-average scores whereas > with Baldwin you just eliminate one at a time. If I recall correctly, there's no reason to use Baldwin instead of Nanson, since Nanson passes everything Baldwin does and also passes reversal symmetry. -km

Elimination counts, I seem to remember were prescribed. But they are the wrong road, because they break the conservation of (preferential) information. To amend this requires a rational exclusion count (not an eliminative count), as well as a rational election count, which I've called Binomial STV. Over a century of the Hare system (at-large STV/PR) as used in Cambridge city elections has shown. that traditional STV, with just a rational election, but a "last past the post" elimination count, is a sufficiently robust democratic representation. Single members, tho, are maiorocracy, the tyranny of the majority, as John Stuart Mill, and Lani Guinier said. They give monopoly power to elected officials, from top to bottom of society. They are "elective dictatorship" as Hailsham said. In other words, democracy needs to move on from the ancient Greek tyranny, which elects a leader with a free hand over everyone else. Singles should be the exception, not the rule, in a democracy. Regards, Richard Lung. On 21 Jan 2023, at 1:11 am, Bob Richard (lists) <lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: Law professor Ned Foley has proposed what he seems to think is a new Concorcet-compliant method. He calls it "total vote runoff". My guess is that it has in fact been discussed on this list under another name. I am I right, and (if so) what do the members of this list call it? https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4328946 Here is the summary description: "Total Vote Runoff (TVR) is an electoral system designed to be identical to Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is the most commonly understood and implemented form of Ranked Choice Voting in the United States, except for one key detail. Like IRV, TVR sequentially eliminates the weakest candidate on the ranked-choice ballot when no candidate is ranked first on a majority of ballots. Unlike IRV, however, TVR identifies the weakest candidate to be eliminated based on the total votes each candidate receives on all the ballots, rather than just the number of first-place votes (as IRV does). A candidate’s total votes from each ballot is defined as the number of other candidates the candidate is ranked higher than on the ballot — as being ranked higher than another candidate is equivalent to securing a vote against that candidate, given that ranked-choice ballots can be conceived as mathematically equivalent to a round-robin election among all the candidates on the ballot. " --Bob Richard ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

There is a very simple, transparrnt Condorcet method (and really only one such method) along these lines that is both clone free and tournament monotone: Worst Loser Elimination(WLE). It's really the only RCV method worth serious consideration ... given the current election reform environment ... which (among other considerstions) only allows elimination methods. For that reason I want to give a simple, transparent explanation of it in sports tournament language. A simple but thorough way to determine the championship winning basketball team in a given league is by means of a tournament in which every team is pitted in a head to head matchup with every other team. If one team wins every one of its matches, then that team is the undisputed universal champion. Otherwise we eliminate one team at a time until there is such an undisputed champion among the remaining teams. Which team should be eliminated first? If there is any team that lost every single one of its matchups (a universal loser), then it qualifies as "worst loser" and is to be eliminated first. More generally, at any elimination stage a team that has lost every match among the remaining teams should be the next team to be eliminated. If at any stage there is no such Universal Loser, then we eliminate another contestant for "worst loser".. the team closest to being "skunked" by the other remaining teams ... the one closest to having zero points in one of its matchups with another remaining team. In this manner ... until there is an undisputed champ among the remaining teams we eliminate (from among the remaining candidates) the worst loser ... defined as eithe the universal loser or (lacking that) the most nearly skunked team. The tournament finish order for the tournament is the reverse order of the eliminations ... first eliminated finishes last ... last eliminated finishes first. "The first shall be last, a d the last shall be first!" There is one obvious question about our choice of which candidate to eliminate when there is no universal loser: why not just eliminate the candidate with the most lost matches? There are two relevant reasons: 1. It is very likely that two teams will be tied for the most losses among the remaining candidates at some stage ...as in a rock,paper,scissors cycle tie where each of three remaining team loses to exactly one other team ... so then a tie breaking method must be introduced ... complicating things. Remember, we place a high premium on both decisiveness and simplicity in the public election context that we have in the back of our minds. 2. This alternate elimination rule would not do in the election methods context that we are contemplating, because itt would create a clone independence violation of "teaming vulnerability" that out of fairness considerations must be avoided at all costs in the election methods context ... otherwise it would be like teams (think a set of related candidates) colluding to prop up one of their buddies by carefully selecting whom they lose to ... not trying very hard to win against their agreed upon buddy. This distortion can happen accidentally too ... independent of bad intentions. So how do we convert this tournament championship method into a single winner election method? The number of points that candidate X gets in its matchup with candidate Y is simply the number of ballots on which candidate X is ranked ahead of candidate Y. A rectangular table is created that has a row for each candidate listing their points against the others. In the row for candidate X put a star next to each candidate that loses a match to one or more of the other candidates. If there is a candidate whose row has no stars, that candidate is the undisputed champ. Otherwise eliminate the candidate that has a star next to every entry in its row ... unless there is no such candidate ... in which case eliminate the candidate whose row contains the smallest starred number. When you eliminate a candidate ... erase its entire row as well as all of the points against it by other candidates .. so that all remaining table entries refer only to the remaining candidates. Then repeat the same process applied to the remaining table ... and since the remaing stars refer only to the pairwise losses among the remaining candidates, they are still valid ... no need to reestablish them at every step. Et Cetera! Thanks! Spread the word! -Forest On Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:40 PM Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21@gmail.com> wrote: > A Condorcet Candidate will never have the lowest Borda Count ... not even > below average ... so you could speed this up by eliminating at each step > all candidates with below average "total votes." > > But the method is clone dependent ... unlike a similar but simpler > Condorcet Compliant method that Benham calls "Gross Loser Elimination" > (GLE) which (at each step) eliminates the candidate with the smallest > single pairwise vote instead of eliminating the candidate with the smallest > sum of pairwise votes. > > In my opinion GLE is the simplest elimination method worth supporting. > > Operationally you start by constructing the same precinct summable > pairwise matrix that you would use for Borda Elimination. > > But instead of eliminating (at each step) the remaining candidate with the > smallest row sum, you eliminate (at each step) the remaining candidate with > the smallest row min ... the Gross Loser. > > The margins versions of these two related methods are slightly more > transparent, as well as precisely equivalent in the case of complete > rankings.. The pairwise margins matrix is obtained from the pairwise vote > matrix by subtracting is transpose from it. > > In a margins matrix every negative entry in the row of a candidate > represents a pairwise loss for that candidate. > > The row of a Condorcet candidate will have no negative entry, but every > other row will. In particular the margins row of the Gross Loser must have > a negative entry ... so the Gross Loser cannot be a Condorcet Candidate ... > therefore eliminating the Gross Loser (or any other candidate with a > negative entry) cannot eliminate a Condorcet candidate. > > The average of all of the rows in the margins matrix is a row of zeros ... > and therefore has a zero row summ. But the row of a Condorcet candidate > has a positive row sum ... therefore above average. > > So you no longer have to take on blind faith the veracity of these > assertions about the Condorcet efficiency of Borda Elimination and GLE.... > you can see for yourself the complete rationale! > > Next time you see Maskin ... alert him to the existence of GLE ... so he > can break out of his rut of supporting clone depend methods ... like > Copeland, Borda, Black, Nanson, Baldwin, etc. > > At least he hasn't yet recommended Kemeny-Young! ... (as far as I am aware) > > I have to believe that if he knew better, he would do better! > > -Forest > > > On Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 7:54 PM robert bristow-johnson < > rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote: > >> >> >> > On 01/20/2023 10:31 PM EST Bob Richard (lists) < >> lists001@robertjrichard.com> wrote: >> > >> > >> > If Robert (or anyone else) can demonstrate that this is not Condorcet, >> > they should let Foley know pronto. He is a Condorcet enthusiast. >> > >> >> I am that. But I, also, am not trained in social choice theory or >> psephology. I am trained in the mathematics surrounding digital signal >> processing and my experience is DSP of audio and music signals (stuff like >> guitar effects and music synthesis). >> >> I have trouble reading some of the math in other papers coming from the >> likes of Maskin or Tideman or Schulze. Sometimes it's just the way it's >> setup, but I am not as good at discrete mathematics as I am into the kinda >> math that engineers and meatball physicists use (that comes outa calculus >> and diff eq and linear system theory) >> >> > The method appears to be to eliminate the current Borda loser in each >> > round, until one remaining candidate has a majority. Or something very >> > close to that. Foley is a lawyer, not a social choice theorist, and his >> > explanations are a little hard to follow. >> >> He got Maskin on his side. I almost got Maskin and Tideman to appear >> (via Zoom) before the Vermont Senate Government Operations committee last >> April but the chair of the committee *snubbed* them. Unbelievable. >> >> I am reading (or skimming) Foley's paper now and will probably send him >> an email. His email address appears to be foley.33@osu.edu . I would >> hope that folks here better than me might pipe in. It appears that Foley >> is unaware of Burlington 2009 and of Minneapolis 2021 (which had a cycle). >> And since Maskin was certainly aware of Burlington 2009 (because of my >> conversations with him), I am surprized that there is all this talk in the >> paper of Alaska 2022 but none of Burlington 2009. >> >> >> -- >> >> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com >> >> "Imagination is more important than knowledge." >> >> . >> . >> . >> ---- >> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list >> info >> >